Naval warfare of World War I

Mahan's thesis was highly influential and led to an explosion of new naval construction worldwide. The US Congress immediately ordered the building of three battleships (with a fourth, USS Iowa, to be built two years later). Japan, whose British trained navy wiped out the Russian fleet at the Battle of Tsushima, helped to reinforce the concept of naval power as the dominant factor in conflict. However, the book made the most impact in Germany. The German Kaiser Wilhelm II had been much impressed by the Royal Navy, when he visited his grandmother, Queen Victoria. His mother said "Wilhelm’s one idea is to have a Navy which shall be larger and stronger than the British navy". In 1898 came the first German Fleet Act, two years later a second doubled the number of ships to be built, to 19 battleships and 23 cruisers in the next 20 years. In another decade, Germany would go from a naval ranking lower than Austria to having the second largest battle fleet in the world. For the first time since Trafalgar, Britain had an aggressive and truly dangerous rival to worry about.

Mahan wrote in his book that not only world peace or the empire, but Britain's very survival depended on the Royal Navy ruling the waves. Indeed, the Cambridge 1895 Latin essay prize was called "Britannici maris", or "British Sea Power". So when the great naval review of June 1897 for the Queen's diamond Jubilee took place, it was in an atmosphere of unease and uncertainty. The question everyone wanted to know the answer to was how Britain was going to stay ahead. But Mahan couldn't give any answers. The man who thought he could was Jackie Fisher, then Commander in Chief, Mediterranean Fleet. He believed there were "Five strategic keys to the empire and world economic system: Gibraltar, Alexandria and Suez, Singapore, the Cape of Good Hope, and the Straits of Dover." His job was to keep hold of all of them.

Design of the revolutionary battleship HMS Dreadnought.

When he became First Sea Lord, Fisher began drawing up plans for a naval war against Germany. "Germany keeps her whole fleet always concentrated within a few hours of England," he wrote to the Prince of Wales in 1906. "We must therefore keep a fleet twice as powerful within a few hours of Germany."[1] He therefore concentrated the bulk of the fleet in home waters, with a secondary concentration in the Mediterranean Fleet. He also had dozens of obsolete warships scrapped or hulked. The resources thus saved were directed to new designs of submarines, destroyers, light cruisers, battlecruisers and (most notably) dreadnoughts. Fisher proclaimed, “We shall have ten Dreadnoughts at sea before a single foreign Dreadnought is launched, and we have thirty percent more cruisers than Germany and France put together!”.

SMS Rheinland, a Nassau-class battleship, Germany's first response to Dreadnought.

Admiral Alfred Tirpitz had also often visited Portsmouth as a naval cadet and admired and envied the Royal Navy. Like the Kaiser, Tirpitz believed Germany's future dominant role in the world depended on a navy powerful enough to challenge it. He demanded large numbers of battleships. Even when Dreadnought was launched making his previously constructed 15 battleships obsolete, he believed that eventually Germany's technological and industrial might would allow Germany to out-build Britain ship for ship. Using the threat of his own resignation he forced the Reichstag to build three dreadnoughts and a battle cruiser. He also put aside money for a future submarine branch. At the rate that Tirpitz insisted upon, Germany would have thirteen in 1912, to Britain's 16.

When this was leaked out to the British public in spring 1909, there was public outcry. The public demanded eight new battleships instead of the four the government had planned for that year. As Winston Churchill put it, “The Admiralty had demanded six ships; the economists offered four; and we finally compromised on eight”.[2] Tirpitz had no option but to consider Britain's new dreadnought building program as a direct threat to Germany. He had to respond, raising the stakes further. However, the commitment of funds to out-build the Germans meant Britain was abandoning any notion of a two-power standard for naval superiority. No amount of money would allow Britain to compete with Germany and Russia or the US, or even Italy. Thus a new policy, of dominance over the world's second leading sea power by a 60% margin went into effect. Fisher's staff had been getting increasingly annoyed by the way he refused to tolerate any difference in opinion, and the eight dreadnought demand had been the last straw. Thus on January 25, 1910, Fisher left the admiralty. Shortly after Fisher's resignation, Churchill became First Lord of the Admiralty.[2] Under him, the race would continue; indeed Lloyd George nearly resigned when Churchill presented him with the naval budget of 1914 of 50 million pounds.

By the start of the war Germany had an impressive fleet both of capital ships and submarines. Other nations had smaller fleets, generally with a lower proportion of battleships and a larger proportion of smaller ships like destroyers and submarines. France, Italy, Russia, Austria-Hungary, Japan, and the United States all had modern fleets with at least some dreadnoughts and submarines.

The North Sea was the main theater of the war for surface action. The British Grand Fleet took position against the German High Seas Fleet. Britain's larger fleet could maintain a blockade of Germany, cutting it off from overseas trade and resources. Germany's fleet remained mostly in harbor behind their screen of mines, occasionally attempting to lure the British fleet into battle (one of such attempts was the bombardment of Yarmouth and Lowestoft) in the hopes of weakening them enough to break the blockade or allow the High Seas Fleet to attack British shipping and trade. Britain strove to maintain the blockade and, if possible, to damage the German fleet enough to remove the threat to the islands and free the Grand Fleet for use elsewhere. In 1918 the U.S. Navy with British help laid the North Sea Mine Barrage designed to keep U-boats from slipping into the Atlantic.

Major battles included those at Heligoland Bight (two of them), Dogger Bank, and Jutland. Though British tactical success remains a subject of historical debate, Britain accomplished its strategic objective of maintaining the blockade and keeping the main body of the High Seas Fleet in port for the vast majority of the war. The High Seas Fleet remained a threat as a fleet in being that forced Britain to retain a majority of its capital ships in the North Sea.

The set-piece battles and maneuvering have drawn historians' attention; however, it was the naval blockade of food and raw material imports into Germany which ultimately starved the German people and industries and contributed to Germany seeking the Armistice of 1918.

Although the English Channel was of vital importance to the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) fighting in France, there were no big warships of the British Royal Navy in the Channel. The primary threat to the British forces in the Channel was the German High Seas Fleet based near Heligoland; the German fleet, if let out into the North Sea, could have destroyed any ship in the Channel. The German High Seas Fleet could muster at least 13 dreadnoughts and many armoured cruisers along with dozens of destroyers to attack the Channel.[3] The High Seas Fleet would be fighting against only six armoured cruisers that were laid down in 1898–1899, far too old to accompany the big, fast dreadnoughts of the Grand Fleet based in Scapa Flow.[4]

The U-boat threat in the Channel, although real, was not a significant worry to the Admiralty because they regarded submarines as useless.[5] Even the German high command regarded the U-boat as, "experimental vessels."[6] Although the Channel was a major artery of the BEF, the Channel was never attacked directly by the High Seas Fleet.

U-boat sinking a troopship, painting by Willy Stöwer

While Germany was strangled by Britain's blockade, Britain, as an island nation, was heavily dependent on resources imported by sea. German submarines (U-boats) were of limited effectiveness against surface warships on their guard, but were greatly effective against merchant ships.

In 1915, Germany declared a naval blockade of Britain, to be enforced by its U-boats. The U-boats sank hundreds of Allied merchant ships. However, submarines normally attack by stealth. This made it difficult to give warning before attacking a merchant ship or to rescue survivors. This resulted in many civilian deaths, especially when passenger ships were sunk. It also violated the Prize Rules of the Hague Convention. Furthermore, the U-boats also sank neutral ships in the blockade area, either intentionally or because identification was difficult from underwater.

This turned neutral opinion against the Central Powers, as countries like the U.S. and Brazil suffered casualties and losses to their trade.

In early 1917, Germany declared unrestricted submarine warfare, including attacks without warning against all ships in the "war zone", including neutrals. This was a major cause of U.S. declaration of war on Germany.

The U-boat campaign ultimately sank much of British merchant shipping and caused shortages of food and other necessities. The U-boats were eventually defeated by grouping merchant ships into defended convoys. This was also assisted by U.S. entry into the war and the increasing use of primitive sonar and aerial patrolling to detect and track submarines.

Some limited sea combat took place between the navies of Austria-Hungary and Germany and the Allied navies of France, Britain, Italy and Japan. The navy of the Ottoman Empire only sortied out of the Dardanelles once late in the war during the Battle of Imbros, preferring to focus its operations in the Black Sea.

The main fleet action was the Triple Entente attempt to knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war by an attack on Constantinople in 1915. This attempt turned into the Battle of Gallipoli which resulted in a Triple Entente defeat.

For the rest of the war, naval action consisted almost entirely in submarine combat by the Austrians and Germans and blockade duty by the triple entente.

The Black Sea was mainly the domain of the Russians and the Ottoman Empire. The large Russian fleet was based in Sevastopol and it was led by two diligent commanders: Admiral Andrei Eberhardt (1914–1916) and Admiral Alexander Kolchak (1916–1917). The Ottoman fleet on the other hand was in a period of transition with many obsolete ships. It had been expecting to receive two powerful dreadnoughts fitting out in Britain, but the UK seized the completed Reşadiye and Sultân Osmân-ı Evvel with the outbreak of war with Germany and incorporated them into the Royal Navy.

The war in the Black Sea started when the Ottoman Fleet bombarded several Russian cities in October 1914. The most advanced ships in the Ottoman fleet consisted of two ships of the German Mediterranean Fleet: the powerful battlecruiser SMS Goeben and the speedy light cruiser SMS Breslau, both under the command of the skilled German Admiral Wilhelm Souchon. Goeben was a modern design, and with her well-drilled crew, could easily outfight or outrun any single ship in the Russian fleet. However, even though the opposing Russian battleships were slower, they were often able to amass in superior numbers to outgun Goeben, forcing her to flee.

A continual series of cat and mouse operations ensued for the first two years with both sides' admirals trying to capitalize on their particular tactical strengths in a surprise ambush. Numerous battles between the fleets were fought in the initial years, and Goeben and Russian units were damaged on several occasions.

The Russian Black Sea fleet was mainly used to support General Nikolai Yudenich in his Caucasus Campaign. However, the appearance of Goeben could dramatically change the situation, so all activities, even shore bombardment, had to be conducted by almost the entire Russian Black Sea Fleet, since a smaller force could fall victim to Goeben's speed and guns.

However, by 1916, this situation had swung in the Russians favour – Goeben had been in constant service for the past two years. Due to a lack of facilities, the ship was not able to enter refit and began to suffer chronic engine breakdowns. Meanwhile, the Russian Navy had received the modern dreadnought Imperatritsa Mariya which although slower, would be able to stand up to and outfight Goeben. Although the two ships skirmished briefly, neither managed to capitalize on their tactical advantage and the battle ended with Goeben fleeing and Imperatritsa Mariya gamely trying to pursue. However, the Russian ship's arrival severely curtailed Goeben's activities and so by this time, the Russian fleet had nearly complete control of the sea, exacerbated by the addition of another dreadnought, Imperatritsa Ekaterina Velikaya. German and Turkish light forces would however continue to raid and harass Russian shipping until the end of the war in the east.

After Admiral Kolchak took command in August 1916, he planned to invigorate the Russian Black Seas Fleet with a series of aggressive actions. The Russian fleet mined the exit from the Bosporus, preventing nearly all Ottoman ships from entering the Black Sea. Later that year, the naval approaches to Varna, Bulgaria were also mined. The greatest loss suffered by the Russian Black Sea fleet was the destruction of Imperatritsa Mariya, which blew up in port on October 20 (October 7 o.s.) 1916, just one year after being commissioned. The subsequent investigation determined that the explosion was probably accidental, though sabotage could not be completely ruled out. The event shook Russian public opinion. The Russians continued work on two additional dreadnoughts under construction, and the balance of power remained in Russian hands until the collapse of Russian resistance in November 1917.

To support the Anglo-French attack on the Dardanelles, British, French and Australian submarines were sent into the Black Sea in the Spring of 1915. A number of Turkish supply ships and warships were sunk but several submarines were lost. The boats were withdrawn at the evacuation of the Dardanelles in January 1916.

The small Romanian Black Sea Fleet defended the port of Sulina throughout the second half of 1916, causing the sinking of one German submarine. Its minelayer also defended the Danube Delta from inland, leading to the sinking of one Austro-Hungarian Danube monitor. (See also Romanian Black Sea Fleet during World War I)

When Bulgaria entered World War I in 1915, its navy consisted mainly of a French-built torpedo gunboat called Nadezhda and six torpedo boats. It mainly engaged in mine warfare actions in the Black Sea against the Russian Black Sea Fleet and allowed the Germans to station two U-boats at Varna, one of which came under Bulgarian control in 1916 as Podvodnik No. 18. Russian mines sank one Bulgarian torpedo boat and damaged one more during the war.[7]

In the Baltic Sea, Germany and Russia were the main combatants, with a number of British submarines sailing through the Kattegat to assist the Russians. With the German fleet larger and more modern (many High Seas Fleet ships could easily be deployed to the Baltic when the North Sea was quiet), the Russians played a mainly defensive role, at most attacking convoys between Germany and Sweden.

A major coup for the Allied forces occurred on August 26, 1914 when as part of a reconnaissance squadron, the light cruiser SMS Magdeburg ran aground in heavy fog in the Gulf of Finland. The other German ships tried to refloat her, but decided to scuttle her instead when they became aware of an approaching Russian intercept force. Russian Navy divers scoured the wreck and successfully recovered the German naval codebook which was later passed on to their British Allies and contributed immeasurably to Allied success in the North Sea.

With heavy defensive and offensive mining on both sides, fleets played a limited role in the Eastern Front. The Germans mounted major naval attacks on the Gulf of Riga, unsuccessfully in August 1915 and successfully in October 1917, when they occupied the islands in the Gulf and damaged Russian ships departing from the city of Riga, recently captured by Germany. This second operation culminated in the one major Baltic action, the battle of Moon Sound at which the Russian battleship Slava was sunk.

By March 1918, the Russian Revolution and the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk made the Baltic a German lake, and German fleets transferred troops to support the White side in the Finnish Civil War and to occupy much of Russia, halting only when defeated in the West.

A number of German ships stationed overseas at the start of the war engaged in raiding operations in poorly defended seas, such as SMS Emden, which raided into the Indian Ocean, sinking or capturing thirty Allied merchant ships and warships, bombarding Madras and Penang, and destroying a radio relay on the Cocos Islands before being sunk there by HMAS Sydney. Better known was the German East Asia Squadron, commanded by Admiral Graf Maximilian von Spee, who sailed across the Pacific, raiding Papeete and winning the Battle of Coronel before being defeated and mostly destroyed at the Battle of the Falkland Islands. The last remnants of Spee's squadron were interned at Chilean ports and destroyed at the Battle of Mas a Tierra.

Allied naval forces captured many of the isolated German colonies, with Samoa, Micronesia, Qingdao, German New Guinea, Togo, and Cameroon falling in the first year of the war. As Austria-Hungary refused to withdraw its cruiser SMS Kaiserin Elisabeth from the German naval base of Qingdao, Japan declared war in 1914 not only on Germany, but also on Austria-Hungary. The cruiser participated in the defense of Qingdao where it was sunk in November 1914.[8] Despite the loss of the last German cruiser in the Indian Ocean, SMS Königsberg, off the coast of German East Africa in July 1915, German East Africa held out in a long guerilla land campaign. British naval units despatched through Africa under Lieutenant-Commander Geoffrey Spicer-Simson had won strategic control of Lake Tanganyika in a series of engagements by February 1916, though fighting on land in German East Africa continued until 1918.